On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, William Hooper wrote:
I must say that I'm a rather disappointed the the status quo WRT MP3 support in Red Hat 9 remains the same. Considering that both Mandrake and SUSe are releasing their next versions with MP3 support in them... (... unless I'm seriously mistaken about this!).
This has been commented to death. Red Hat has explained their reasons: http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_80mm.html
I don't see the MP3 situation changing, hence don't expect MP3 support in Red Hat. And for the record I would like to thank Red Hat for standing by the concept of Open Source by not shipping/licensing things that violate the spirit of Open Source.
I'd also like to add another point... People who want MP3 support, presumeably are planning on using such support to play MP3 content which they legally own. That would mean that they have the original music or content on CDROM or some other medium.
My usage of mp3s are mostly from links to music sites that have the mp3s available for download.
Some are from friends that say this band has decent music. So I want to hear the song, before I purchase the album.
My legally purchased music is all in ogg format. I get ogg players for play, on non-linux systems, such as work.
I hope more people go for the ogg format, over mp3. Too bad that it is very hard to convince others to switch to ogg format. I do think that it sounds better than mp3 format. Maybe the stance against providing mp3s will increase ogg usage. For the current situation, it is just an inconvienience.
Red Hat provides ogg vorbis support, which surpasses MP3 in both quality, and compression. Users are encouraged to transition to OGG, which is true "free software" and not encumbered by patent issues.
Oggs are great! For compilation CDs for the car. It would be great to be able to drag and drop the ogg, onto a cd burning program, then burn the CD. Currently, I have been converting them to wave, then compiling the CD.
If you are like me. You would want to translate the CD's all to ogg, then pull the ogg file directly. There is loss, but the disk space needed is less.
That doesn't resolve all of the legal uses of the MP3 format, however it does resolve the majority of legal uses. This assumes that a given person is in fact playing content which they do legally have the right to.
I'm with you on this stand. If more people choose Linux, over other platforms, maybe mp3 popularity will die out. This issue seems similar to windows program emulation. I have found alternatives to most windows programs. Ogg is an acceptable alternative to mp3s, for me.
For streaming MP3, or for content which is legally
redistributable in MP3 format, users are free to obtain MP3 plugins or download and add on MP3 playback support from one of many places. Just because it does not come with Red Hat Linux doesn't mean it is not possible to use 15 seconds after you finish installing the OS.
That is the route that I have taken. I didn't time the process. But that is why I desire mp3 support for.
Jim
-- To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.
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